How to Choose a Crypto Market Maker: A Guide for Token Founders

Choosing a market maker is one of the most consequential decisions a token founder will make. The right partner provides the liquidity infrastructure that supports healthy price discovery, tight spreads, and the trading conditions required for exchange listings and institutional participation. The wrong one can crater your token price, destroy community trust, and leave your project fighting for survival.

This guide is written from the perspective of a market maker, Raven, that works with token projects and exchanges across CeFi and DeFi. We have seen what works, what fails, and where founders most often make costly mistakes.

What Does a Crypto Market Maker Actually Do?

A crypto market maker provides liquidity to a token by continuously placing buy and sell orders on exchanges. This activity narrows the bid-ask spread (the gap between the highest price a buyer will pay and the lowest price a seller will accept), deepens the order book, and allows traders to enter and exit positions without causing large price swings.

Without a market maker, most new and mid-cap tokens would have thin order books, wide spreads, and volatile prices. This deters traders, limits exchange listing opportunities, and undermines the token's credibility as a tradable asset.

A good market maker operates as a neutral liquidity provider. Their revenue comes from capturing the spread between their bid and ask prices across thousands of trades, not from taking directional bets on whether your token goes up or down. They maintain positions on both sides of the order book, manage their inventory risk algorithmically, and provide consistent liquidity around the clock.

Red Flags to Watch For

When evaluating a market maker, certain warning signs should prompt serious caution.

Price guarantees. If a market maker promises your token will reach a specific price, that is a red flag. Legitimate market making is about providing liquidity and maintaining orderly markets, not engineering price targets. Price manipulation, including practices like spoofing (placing and canceling fake orders to create artificial demand), is illegal in most jurisdictions and has been the subject of recent SEC and FBI enforcement actions against firms like CLS Global and GotBit.

No clear KPIs in the agreement. A market-making contract without defined performance metrics is an agreement without accountability. Before signing, you should know exactly what spread targets the market maker commits to, what minimum order book depth they will maintain, and what happens if they underperform.

Conflicts of interest. Ask directly whether the market maker will take proprietary positions in your token beyond what is required for market making. Some firms trade against the projects they serve by shorting loaned tokens. Your agreement should include provisions that restrict the market maker from taking positions that conflict with your project's interests.

What Good Looks Like: How to Evaluate a Market Maker

Beyond avoiding red flags, founders should evaluate potential market makers across several dimensions.

Exchange coverage. Where does the market maker operate? A firm active on major centralized exchanges (Binance, Coinbase, OKX, Bybit) and across DeFi protocols can provide liquidity wherever your token trades.

Technology and infrastructure. Market making is a technology-intensive business. Your market maker should operate algorithmic systems capable of quoting across multiple exchanges simultaneously, responding to market conditions in real time, and managing risk at the portfolio level. Ask about their uptime guarantees, and how their systems perform during periods of high volatility.

Alignment of incentives. The best market-making relationships are structured so that the market maker benefits when the project succeeds. This can take the form of retainer agreements with performance bonuses, equity or token-based alignment, or carefully structured loan agreements with strong contractual protections. The key question is always: does this firm make more money by helping my project, or by extracting value from it?

Responsiveness and support. Crypto markets operate 24/7. Your market maker should be reachable and proactive, not just during business hours but during the volatile moments when you need them most, such as exchange listings, major announcements, or market-wide dislocations.

Questions Every Founder Should Ask Before Signing

Before entering a market-making agreement, ensure you have clear answers to the following:

• What specific KPIs will you commit to (spread, depth, uptime)?
• How will you report on your activity, and how often?
• Will you take proprietary positions in our token?
• How do you handle periods of extreme volatility?
• What is your process for onboarding onto new exchanges?
• Can you provide references from current or past token project clients?

How Raven Approaches Market Making for Token Projects

Raven is a proprietary algorithmic trading firm, providing liquidity and market-making services across crypto, prediction markets, and traditional finance. We operate on every major centralized and decentralized exchange, including Binance, Coinbase, OKX, Hyperliquid, Gate.io, Bybit, and many others.

Our approach to token project partnerships is built on several principles.

Transparency. We provide clear reporting on our market-making activity, with defined KPIs agreed upon before any engagement begins. Projects working with Raven know what we are doing, how we are performing, and what results we are delivering.

Technology-first execution. Our systems are built for low-latency, high-throughput trading across dozens of venues simultaneously. We maintain liquidity 24/7, with automated risk management that ensures consistent performance even during periods of extreme market stress.

Long-term alignment. Raven is focused on building lasting partnerships with projects and exchanges. We do not operate on a model of short-term extraction. Our business depends on the projects we work with succeeding, growing, and thriving over time.

Broad venue coverage. We are operational on every major exchange and continuously integrating new venues. For token projects, this means seamless liquidity provision wherever your token is listed, across both centralized and decentralized platforms.

We work with projects at every stage, from pre-listing liquidity planning to ongoing market making across multiple exchanges. If you are preparing for a token launch, scaling liquidity on new venues, or evaluating your current market-making arrangements, we are happy to have a conversation.